Monday, August 24, 2009

For those interested in the LA Times op-ed Back to School with Less Plastic -- a teaching moment, I've posted a slightly longer version of the editorial below, along with a few links to reports associated with the editorial. For those of you seeking to reduce plastics from school and office, there is also a sampling of sites offering alternative school and office supplies.

My thirteen year-old daughter and I have just returned from the annual back-to-school pilgrimage to the local Big Box Office Store and I am appalled. While for me the leathery smell of new shoes stirs sweet pangs marking those precious last days of summer -- for my children it will most likely be the smell of vinyl and assorted plastics that will remind them of those bitter-sweet end-of-summer days.

As a child of the ‘60s, back when plastics had yet to touch every aspect of our lives, my pencils and rulers were wooden, my binder cardboard and fabric, my book bag canvas, and back-to-school shopping wasn’t a major industry – let alone a “season.”

As a toxicologist who's spent much of the past year studying the world’s overabundance of plastics and their associated toxicities and a consumer who carries cloth bags, avoids over packaged lunch items, much to my kid’s dismay, and diligently recycles -- though admittedly I am not a purist when it comes to plastic-- this year’s shopping trip has left me feeling particularly hypocritical. We entered Big Box armed with “the List.” Parents of school-age kids, know to expect this list sometime in July, the kickoff for the “season.” We left Big Box with an armful of poly vinyl chloride (PVC), polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene – all neatly packaged in yet more polystyrene and PVC. We passed on the plastic bag at the checkout counter. At least we could do that much. Never mind that the store's bags were among the few easily recyclable or reusable plastic products available.

The hundreds of brightly colored disposable plastic pens sold by Big Box certainly are not recyclable. Not only are the plastics often mixed (polystyrene, thermoplastic elastomer and polycarbonate, for example) but without a sufficient market for the materials recycling is not feasible. By some estimates hundreds of millions if not billions of disposable pens are bought in the U.S. each year. Once disposed or lost, bits of those pens will eventually add to the earth’s expanding “plastic layer,” a marker of our twentieth century penchant for the disposable rather than reusable.

Then there is the scourge of the 3-ring binder. I’ve got a stack in the corner of my office. Some are reusable. Others not. Their covers and inside pockets are torn, the rings sprung partly open, their cardboard innards peek through the corners and the colors are all wrong. Last year’s binders were orange and yellow. This year according to “the List” binders must be purple, blue, green and red, a different color for each subject. No kidding. While binders in good condition can be reused, eventually, they will join their plastic companions in the waste-pile.

If Big Box Office Store can collect e-waste and printer cartridges, you’d think they could collect and encourage reuse and recycling of school and office supplies. Apparently once all that plastic leaves the door – it’s our problem not theirs. So much for "extended producer responsibility." And with nearly 56 million k-12 students returning to school, all of those new plastic binders, lunch boxes, pens, rulers and pencil sharpeners (which break more easily than an egg shell,) are a big problem.

A problem which, with a little creativity, could be turned into a sobering educational opportunity --just as students now study the water cycle, what if they studied the life-cycle of their pen or better yet, their PVC notebook? What if they learned that the production of PVC may contaminate the air of local neighborhoods with vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen, and may be associated with increased dioxin concentrations in local residents? Or that some portion of the plastics in their school supplies could end up circulating for decades in remote ocean regions? What if they learned that in some locations marine birds have been found with guts full of colorful plastic bits? Or that plastic could even be a good thing if we reused or recycled over and over?

Of course, school supplies are only a drop in the plastic bucket. A small fraction of the over100 billion pounds of plastic resin reportedly produced by US industries.This is 100 billion pounds of substances resistant to degradation. Substances that will, over the years break into smaller and smaller pieces, some of which will release their chemical building blocks and additives like heavy metals and phthalates– several of which are now known to interfere with endocrine function – into the environment. But plastic school supplies for many kids are, in addition to all those lunch baggies and packaging, part of a yearly ritual which teaches kids that our disposable plastic culture is normal and acceptable

Each new mechanical pencil, binder, report cover and lunch box adds to the planet's steadily accumulating plastic burden. According to the EPA, we discarded thirty million tons of plasticin 2007, 12% of our municipal waste. Back in the 1960s less than 1% or our waste was plastic. Of those thirty million, we recycle a paltry 2.1 millon tons. The rest is landfilled, burned in incinerators, washed up onto remote beaches, or is swirling around in the great Trash Gyre of the North Pacific, where scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography are busy sampling little bits of our discarded plastics.

By sending our kids back to school with a backpack that is, if not plastic, filled with plastic, what are we teaching them? Buying new shoes each year made sense – kids grow out of shoes. Buying a whole new set of school supplies which last barely a year under the best of circumstances, does not.

But there’s hope. Just as plastic is a man-made modern miracle of chemical-engineering, cleaning up after the plastic mess could be this century’s modern miracle. For some products, closed loop processing – fully recyclable carpets for example - reduces resource use and waste.For school supplies that can’t be easily recycled, what if kids were challenged (or bribed) to keep their plastic binders, rulers and pencil sharpeners safe and in good shape so they can be reused the next year? For items that fail to last– perhaps a collection box piled high – sent to key politicians or even back to Big Box, who might in turn, send a message to industry. And better yet, what if teachers - creators of “the List” - urged students to seek out recycled, recyclable or plastic-free school supplies?

At the very least, let’s teach them that it’s time to slow the growth of the plastic layer, a worthy goal for the 21st century.

There are plenty of sites out there to help reduce plastics in school and office too - below is just a sampleing :

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Still stuck in the sunscreen limbo? Wondering which to choose - "chemical" filters or "natural" filters like nanotitanium? While we know chemical filters tend to be absorbed into the skin, should we be concerned about absorption of nanotitanium as well? Or perhaps you're wondering when anyone is going to get around to really thinking about how best to evalute risks of nanomaterials? Well here's your chance to read all about it - at least all about the life and times of nanotitanium in one relatively complete report.

The document, according to EPA is, "...a starting point to to identify what is known and, more importantly, what needs to be known about selected nanomaterial applications."

And, as they tackle the moving target (in the sense that research and publications just keep rolling in) that is nano from production to product, birth to afterlife they invite readers to:

....consider the questions listed throughout the document and offer specific comments on how individual questions, or research needs, might be more precisely or accurately articulated. If additional questions should be included or if information is already available to address some of the questions posed here, readers are encouraged to provide such comments as well. These or other comments on any aspect of the document should be submitted in writing in accordance with instructions, including the specified time period, stated in a Federal Register notice appearing on or about July 31, 2009 referring to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-ORD 2009-0495.

So have at it. It'll be interesting to follow the further development of this report.

Toxicology: the study of the adverse interactions of chemicals with dynamic living systems.We are all exposed to a diversity of chemicals (often as chemical mixtures) through our diet, the pharmaceuticals we use, the air we breath, and the water we drink.While toxicologists usually study xenobiotics or chemicals “foreign to living systems,” it’s worth noting that in some cases, chemicals as familiar and as natural as water can be toxic.

Some history: Toxicology as a formally recognized scientific discipline is relatively new (mid 1900’s) although the science itself is thousands of years old. Consider the potential results of early trial and error experiences of hunter-gatherers for whom identifying a toxic plant or animal was a life or death situation.Some of the most poisonous substances known today are naturally produced chemicals including Ricin from castor beans or tetrodotoxin from the puffer fish. Early humans’ careful observation of plants or animals with toxic characteristics such as frogs containing curare, were put to use not only for avoidance of toxic substances but for weapons as well.Additionally, many naturally derived poisons were likely used for hunting, medicinals (the Egyptians were aware of many toxic substances such as lead, opium and hemlock as early as 1500 BCE), and eventually for the political poisonings practiced, for example, by the early Greeks and Romans.

As humans sought to better understand natural compounds that were both beneficial and harmful, there was very little if any clear understanding of the fundamental chemical nature of substances.That is, there was no connection between the ‘extract’ or ‘essence’ of a poisonous plant or animal and any one particular chemical that might cause toxicity.In fact, an awareness of chemistry in its modern form did not occur until the mid to late 1600’s[i].So it is ironic that Paracelsus, a physician from the sixteenth century and one of the early “Fathers of Toxicology” had no clear understanding of chemistry as we know it today.He along with many others at that time apparently believed that all matter was composed of three “primary bodies” (sulfur, salt, and mercury)[ii]. Yet Paracelsus also coined the now famous (or infamous) maxim of the newly emerging discipline of toxicology:

“All substances are poisons, there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy.”(Paracelsus,1493-1541)

This phrase and Paracelsus’ name are committed to memory by hundreds of new toxicology students each year and has become the ‘motto’ of toxicology.Interestingly, if one takes Paracelsus at face value, it appears he was referring to potential remedies. This is an important point, since in recent years some have turned this around to suggest that exposure to very small doses of highly toxic chemicals (such as dioxins) might not be an problem! These days most of us are well aware of the fact that overdosing can turn remedies to poisons, even with apparently innocuous drugs such as aspirin and Tylenol.

About Me

I am an environmental toxicologist, writer, consultant, and mother of two children aged eleven and thirteen. My focus as a toxicologist is the impact of emerging contaminants on human health and the environment, particularly on aquatic systems. I write for local newspapers and journals, reporting and interpreting current research on environmental contaminants. I am also involved in the development and stewardship of the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org).
You can contact me at:
emonosson@verizon.net